Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Jones Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I certainly pay tribute to Olivia and the thousands like her who do a physically and emotionally demanding job for their loved ones. We recognise the principle. We have made changes to ESA reassessments and the Green Paper affords us the opportunity to look at how that principle could be applied to PIP. It might be to my hon. Friend’s constituent’s advantage to have further PIP assessments because her needs might increase, but there is an opportunity to have a much more streamlined process, which I hope the Green Paper will deliver.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Does the Minister not realise how wildly wrong some of these assessments can be? I had a constituent with cerebral palsy who was told that he would get no mobility component with his personal independence payment, meaning that he risked losing his car and therefore his ability to work. Are any financial sanctions imposed on the contractor for getting such assessments so wildly wrong and hence threatening people’s jobs?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I think the hon. Lady’s question related to PIP. We have also introduced other ways in which we can measure a contractor’s performance, including the use of clinical data. Whether in relation to PIP or to ESA, we need to ensure that the evidence needed to make these judgments is submitted early in the process. We are doing some work to ensure that that happens, and it is improving things considerably.

--- Later in debate ---

[Penny Mordaunt]

We have been trialling a number of measures—for example, the mental health trailblazers, which combines employment support advice with psychological support delivered through the NHS, and we are going to roll that out nationally.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State understand that the dismissive answers that the Under-Secretary of State for Pensions, the hon. Member for Watford (Richard Harrington), gave about the problems faced by WASPI women are a slap in the face to women who have worked all their lives and in many cases have retired to look after sick or elderly relatives, thus saving this country millions of pounds? It is time that Ministers recognised that those who have done the right thing ought to be looked at and their situation alleviated.

[Damian Green]

Since the original legislation was passed more than 20 years ago, and since the Pensions Act 2011, the Government committed £1.1 billion to lessen the impact of the changes for those affected. In the end, we have to address the issue that having the same pension age for men and women is fair, and that at a time when we are all living longer it is necessary, if we are to keep a credible pensions system going, for the pension age to go up gradually for both sexes. [Interruption.] I am sorry that many people in the Labour party do not seem to accept those basic facts of arithmetic, but they are basis facts and the mitigations that were put in place mean that no one has seen their pension age change by more than 18 months compared to the previous timetable—[Interruption.] For 81% of those women the increase will be no more than 12 months. Finally, for the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) who is shouting from the Front Bench, other countries have done this faster than the UK. In nine European Union countries, including Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands, all of which run extremely sophisticated welfare systems, the state pension age was 65 for women as far back as 2009, so the Labour party will have to accept these basic facts.